REPORTING OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER STATUS

For the 2012 National ECEC Collection, data providers were asked to collect Indigenous status by applying the National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) standard Indigenous classification (this definition is in accordance with ‘The Commonwealth Definition’ which was given in a High Court judgement in the case of Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983) 46 ALR 625). At the episode level this directly relates to the Indigenous status of the child. Due to ABS confidentiality requirements and the small population associated with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the preschool sector, the input category needed to be collapsed for the output of the 2012 National ECEC Collection. The below diagram Figure 4.3 outlines how the NMDS data elements of Indigenous status are categorised under the collapsed output for the 2012 National ECEC Collection.

^This is consistent with the broader classification standard outlined in Standards for Statistics on Cultural and Language Diversity, 1999 (cat. no 1289.0).
*For the purposes of the National ECEC Collection, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status only is output.
+Non-Indigenous and not stated/inadequately described output is commonly combined.


For the 2012 National ECEC Collection, Indigenous status in some instances may be different for corresponding episodes for the same child. In instances where the Indigenous status differed between episodes for a child, the business rules used for deriving Indigenous status was as follows:

A child was classified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin if his/her Indigenous status was recorded as such on at least one episode. Figure 4.6 illustrates how the Indigenous status of a child with two episodes of preschool from two different service providers and an inconsistent record of his/her indigenous status has been output for the 2012 National ECEC Collection.




The unique child record assumes Indigenous status information for each child on the basis of the business rules outlined above. If a child is identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander on any one episode of enrolment, their Indigenous status will be output as Indigenous for child and YBFS tables. In the event that a child’s Indigenous status is incorrectly recorded (as Indigenous) in one or more episode, this may result in incorrect classification of that child. It is acknowledged that this methodology may lead to an over-count of Indigenous children depending on the level of accuracy of Indigenous identification.

Table 4.2 below outlines example scenarios for deriving Indigenous Status within the 2012 National ECEC Collection.
 

Unique Child	Episode 1	Episode 2	Episode 3	Output Indigenous status
Child A	Neither Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin	Neither Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin	Aboriginal origin	Indigenous
Child B	Torres Strait Islander origin	Torres Strait Islander origin	Torres Strait Islander origin	Indigenous
Child C	Aboriginal origin	Aboriginal origin	Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin	Indigenous
Child D	Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin	Neither Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin	Neither Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin	Indigenous
Child E	Neither Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin	Neither Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin	Neither Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin	Non-Indigenous

More information can be found in the National best practice guidelines for data linkage activities relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the AIHW website.
<http://www.nss.gov.au/nss/home.nsf/NSS/0DD43402B6B4D854CA257A38001E143B?opendocument>.

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